Pain Of Salvation Gets AMPED By All Axess

This week’s AMPED Artist Of The Week is Swedish progressive/alternative metal veterans, Pain Of Salvation. The band’s laid back cover of the classic Dio track, ‘Holy Diver’ can be streamed below.

‘Holy Diver’ is taken from Pain Of Salvation’s new acoustic album, ‘Falling Home,’ which was released late last year via Inside Out Music. The album is comprised of ten re-imagined versions of favorite PoS songs, as well as two cover songs, ‘Holly Diver’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ and a brand-new song, ‘Falling Home.’

We recently caught up with Pain Of Salvation guitarist/vocalist, Daniel Gildenlöw for some insight into why the band decided make the album: “It all derives from a request we got from a German organiser who was interested in us doing an acoustic gig, much like the one we recorded a decade ago and became the album 12:5. It’s in the very marrow of this band to thrive on challenges and variation, so of course we said yes, and figured that we should record it too, again like with 12:5. Fortunately (since the entire Falling Home album, as we now know it, spawned from it) something went horribly wrong with the syncing of the recording units. So, one of the first things we learned after the gig was that half the channels were never recorded. But as the initial frustration (and urge to lie down and weep) slowly subsided, we realised we couldn’t drop the idea of making the album. For us, it started to become real the minute we started picturing it in our heads. Call it a healthy disability to successfully separate the plane of ideas from the plane of the physical. Hard to tell if we would make Plato proud or displeased. But I digress. Anyway, as a lifetime of intimate encounters with it have taught me, Failure is the true mother of invention in this world. Consequently, once we started to record the live show in studio, it started to transform and mutate into the very special album we now see. Falling Home.”

As for their cover of ‘Holy Diver,’ Gildenlöw said the song had been in the band’s repertoire for some time: “Holy Diver” just seemed the perfect candidate to be run through this creative meat grinder of magic, and I really loved the way it turned out. But the only time we did it was under terrible conditions and in front of an inattentive (and rather inebriated, let’s be honest here) crowd of middle aged men reliving their 80s for one night. I always felt it deserved to be recorded, and appreciated by a larger (and slightly less inebriated?) crowd, and here was finally the perfect chance!”

Stay tuned for the full, in-depth interview with Gildenlöw later in the week.

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